1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an image processing apparatus and, more particularly, to an image processing apparatus which can execute a dodging processing.
2. Description of the Related Art
An attention is paid to what is called a wide dynamic range camera, that is, a camera having a wide dynamic range which allows to clearly photograph both an extremely bright object and a dark object in the case where the both objects exist in a same angle of view. As a method of enabling such a photographing of the wide dynamic range, there is a dodging processing which is executed in a darkroom on a silver-halide film picture. For this purpose, there is such a technique (digital dodging processing) that the dodging processing is realized by a digital image processing and an object having a contrast, particularly, an object photographed against the light is corrected. The technique in the related art regarding such a digital dodging processing is disclosed in the Official Gazette of Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 2006-65676. The technique disclosed in the Official Gazette of Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 2006-65676 generates an area judgement image for determining a coefficient for correction, by reducing an image by extracting therefrom a luminance component, subsequently subjecting the reduced image to low-pass filtering, and then enlarging the filtered image.
However, the technique in the related art disclosed in the Official Gazette of Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 2006-65676 aims at only one image processing. Therefore, in an apparatus which should aim at two image processings, for example, in a monitoring camera or the like for simultaneously distributing a moving image and a still image, there is a possibility that degrees of two image quality differ.
In consideration of the above problem, an aspect of the invention is to reduce a difference between the effects of the dodging processings executed in two or more different processing units.